I was also recently looking for a place at Apartments.com, as I learned all places get 5 star ranking to start, and it’s of course not clear at all in the UX. I think at the moment google maps does pretty good job with rankings.
Concrete example: I recently bought a new office chair. My shopping process involved a lot of reading reviews and a lot of sitting in actual chairs. The chair I ended up with, an Ikea Långfjäll, wasn't even considered by Wirecutter because it lacks a lot of adjustability features. But there are a lot of truly independent reviews (by which I mean, people talking on Web forums or mentioning the chair they use on their personal blogs) with the general consensus being, "This chair is fantastic if it fits your body and you don't need/want all the bells and whistles." A couple people even said they happily switched to it from an Aeron chair or similar. Which describes me well enough, insofar as my office was supplying me with Herman Miller love up until the pandemic hit.
So, all in all, I'm loving this chair. But, if I were constrained to the Wirecutter "The best X" format, I wouldn't include it, either, because its lack of adjustability means it just won't be suitable for lots and lots and lots of people.
That said, there's just no amount of "not actually sketchy" that will prevent this sort of revenue model from seeming sketchy. Hard not to wonder if there are small Internet-only companies that only sell direct-to-consumer who are being shut out of independent reviews, or are feeling pressure to give them a cut in order to avoid being cut out.